Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych instructed on Tuesday the country’s Prosecutor General’s Office to create a working group to look into the disruption of Victory Day celebrations in Lvov and attacks on Russian diplomats.
Members of the Ukrainian Svoboda (Freedom) nationalist organization brawled with WWII veterans, tore and burnt Soviet flags, and trod on a wreath that the Russian consul general in Lvov, Oleg Astakhov, planned to lay at the tombs of Soviet soldiers who died while liberating Ukraine from Nazi Germany.
Yanukovych said that the working group must include representatives of the Ukrainian Security Council and police.
Ukrainian nationalists claim that Ukraine suffered identically from both Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union.
Moscow said on Tuesday it expected Kiev to punish the members of the organization responsible for the violence and destruction of the Russian flag.
Yanukovych warned nationalists on Monday against attempts to sow discord in society and said that the government would “respond” to such actions.
MOSCOW, May 10 (RIA Novosti)